On the cartoons

You may have noticed that one of the writers over at the PoliBlog, Danny Kampf, has been making posts lately petitioning The Daily Colonial to print the controversial cartoons depicting the key figure of Islam, Muhammad which were originally printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. His argument is that we should do it as a stand of solidarity with both Jyllands-Posten and a student newspaper that was silenced after reprinting the cartoons.

Now, Danny is one of our best columnists, and I respect both his writing and logical argument skills, so I’ve really thought through this one, and consulted all of my most trusted staff members extensively.

We’re not going to be reprinting the cartoons.

Here’s the thing – I can’t think of a direct reason to do so. We’re not an activist newspaper, we’re an impartial news source (a uniquely American concept, by the way – this whole “lack of bias” thing is just really on this side of the Atlantic). Therefore, solidarity on freedom of speech rights with off-campus publications is really not enough to convince me.

Another argument he put forward is that the American public, even the unusually aware students at GW, may not have seen the cartoons, or have been given the wrong idea by poor reporting. I agree with this point – as such, we’re going to link to the Wikipedia entry about it in any articles we may do about it. I think that’s the best way – just telling readers to do a Google search, any kind of thing can come up. I trust Wikipedia to be accurate, especially since the entry is currently locked.

I would like to thank Danny for bringing up the point in the first place. It’s an important discussion for every editor to have. I’m glad that we employ people who are willing to ask tough questions like that.

Of course, this could all change. If you think you can convince me either way, please go ahead and comment here – I’d love to hear more arguments. You might even change my mind, who knows. I should also note that if such censorship does pop up on campus, solidarity becomes a much stronger argument.